


the f-word

by dayflies



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Attempt at Humor, Choi Yeonjun Is Bad At Feelings, Denial of Feelings, Don't Try This At Home, Humor, M/M, One Sided Rivalry, Pining, kai and aengdu are here for like two seconds, mentions of unhealthy study habits, yeonjun is a perfect example of what not to do, yeonjun: everything is fine (it was in fact not fine)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27305410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dayflies/pseuds/dayflies
Summary: This was the unsolvable math problem of the century. Yeonjun could barely wrap his head around the mere notion of it. An image of his mind - wild disorder, like a middle school fire drill exercise, except the fire was very real; double the chaos.or: Yeonjun has a problem, and nothing he does seem to be able to combat it.
Relationships: Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 10
Kudos: 60





	the f-word

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello, i used this as one of my application works for a zine, so i thought i might as well throw it up here! i already put it in the tags put this features some pretty unhealthy coping mechanisms - it's not described in a graphic way or anything like that, but i just figured i'd mention it! Don't Be Like Fictional Yeonjun is the main takeaway from this
> 
> there is unfortunately no mention of beomgyu in this, sorry :( if you miss him you can find him [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27045616) where he has an entire fic for himself hehe

It had only been three weeks since summer vacation drew to a close, with the dreaded, long days of school pulling students out of their slumbers, and replacing their oversized t-shirts, grass stained shorts, and popsicles with school uniforms and heavy books about math and science and grammar. And well, our lovely main character had already started wondering whether he should’ve just not come back at all.

School in itself was fine, of course. It was nice actually having something to do that wasn’t sitting in front of an electric fan to stop himself from melting into a puddle, or scanning wares at the convenience store while asking people if they _want a receipt? Here you go, have a nice day!_

And it was pretty cool seeing his friends again.

Or well, friend.

It was also nice to get away from his parents (he loved them, but sometimes they could be a bit much. As family tends to do).

Classes were fine too - he was as always, the perfect student, with perfect marks and perfect attendance (“for six years in a row! Cool right?”), and although he sometimes (privately) complained about the amount of homework, it was somewhat manageable. Really, everything was going just fine. Nothing of the sort was the actual problem. What was keeping Choi Yeonjun on his tippy toes, ready to risk everything and break his 6 year record of perfect attendance, or drop out, or transfer, or anything, was… well.

Here’s a thing or two you should probably know about our dear Yeonjun before we get to that part: he’s a junior, and famous for placing first in just about every subject. Best friend of Kang Taehyun, yes the Kang Taehyun who had once brought his pet snake to school, where it escaped and wasn’t found until hours later, inside the bag of Huening Kai, a small, pale kid, who’d started screaming at the top of his lungs and didn’t show up in class the rest of the week. Also infamous for being kind of, well, cold.

He didn’t do it on purpose. Yeonjun was a great guy, he was, and he’s sure Taehyun would vouch for that. Seeming “mean” or whatever, was just a side effect of his tendency to completely repress what he was feeling, not unlike the way poor Huening Kai had likely attempted to repress the rather traumatizing memory of opening up his bag and seeing a tiny, red snake curled up next to his lunch box.

Now, one might be under the impression that this sounds a little unhealthy, but for Yeonjun it did the trick - it was easier for him to ignore his emotions: push them away, sweep them under a rug, and replace them with an expression of extreme, excruciating boredom. But that obviously didn’t mean he didn't feel anything at all.

Staring up at the scoreboard after a test and seeing someone inch a bit too close to his name, teachers telling him his grades were slipping and he’d “have to be careful if he didn’t want to lose his number one spot” with a good-natured laugh and an elbow-jab (Yeonjun didn’t see how that was funny in the slightest), classmates looking at him with a combination of awe and jealousy and fear, calling him unapproachable, his only friend was the kid who had a pet snake for goodness sake - he’d clench his fist, _pretend you don't care, ignore, ignore, ignore_.

It was second nature, at this point. It came as naturally to him as going on half an hour of sleep on the day of a test, because he’d stayed up all night to study, spent the morning covering up his dark circles, and fallen asleep in the bus on the way to school while mentally going over his notes again. It was unconscious, the same way he often dreamt about flunking his exams, or arriving at the test site just a few minutes short, dramatically begging guards to let him in as they stared down at him with impassive glares.

It was easy.

But this... this was the unsolvable math problem of the century. Yeonjun could barely wrap his head around the mere notion of it. An image of his mind - wild disorder, like a middle school fire drill exercise, except the fire was very real; double the chaos.

Ignoring it didn't work either - a fruit fly circling and buzzing around his face, coming back even after he’d swatted at it violently, with the intent to quite literally murder it. Every time he tried to squash it with his bare hands, it came back with newfound strength (and an even louder buzz). Whenever he tried not to think about it, it was there. It wasn’t exactly a great feeling, he had to admit.

So, suppressing was seemingly not the One Remedy Cures All that Yeonjun had initially thought it was. The next thing Yeonjun did in a kind of pathetic attempt to solve his problem, was… nothing at all. Or rather, he speculated a whole lot, and then proceeded to do nothing about it.

You see, Yeonjun was a quite stubborn specimen. If Taehyun wasn’t going to vouch for his decency, he would definitely vouch for how wholeheartedly bullheaded Yeonjun could be. “Hell if I’m going to ask anyone for help,” he’d say with his nose buried in the same particularly irritating physics problem he’d been staring at for the past two hours. Because a problem always had a solution... except this one, apparently.

So instead, he threw himself down on his bed, and stared up at the ceiling for about four hours straight, thinking about what it was that could possibly be wrong with him, because _that_ couldn’t _possibly_ be normal?

This awful feeling that made him lose sleep, made him absolutely sick to his stomach, made him feel as if someone was sticking a hand through his gut, clenching around his insides, made him feel as if he was dying, in the most literal sense? (He realized he was being pretty dramatic, but hey, he was in the depths of despair, and it wasn’t like Taehyun or anyone else were around to witness him wallow in his misery.)

Finally, after five hours of pure reflection becoming increasingly existential by the minute, he forced himself to a reach a conclusion so he could get on with his life:

So maybe he was being overly dramatic; maybe it wasn’t so bad, and things - his brain, would go back to its usual one-track minded state of pure determination and ambition that all his teachers and his parents seemed to love oh so much about him, within a few weeks. The holidays would be his savior - he wouldn’t have to show up at school, he wouldn’t have to look at anyone at all except his parents and Taehyun and the beady little eyes of his pet snake, and everything would be fine.

He’d finally get away from _him_ \- Yeonjun couldn’t even make himself say his name in his mind, because then he’d start actually thinking again - and he wouldn’t have to listen to his annoying voice, wouldn’t have to stare up at his name right underneath Yeonjun’s on the scoreboard, wouldn’t have to sit behind him on purpose so he could very pointedly not stare at his neck, wouldn’t have to awkwardly avert his gaze when he turned around in his seat with that stupid, stupid dimpled smile, asking if he could borrow a pencil, (really, how difficult could it be to just _bring_ a pencil every day, just _why_ was he always in need of a pencil, it couldn’t possibly be that hard to remember one), wouldn’t have to lie awake at night wondering if he ever thought about him, wouldn’t have to breathe in the same air as him and the mind numbing idiot he was dating and if one more person called them the “it couple of the school” one more time Yeonjun was going to drop out, he couldn’t take it, he couldn’t, why the hell couldn’t people just shut the f-

There were still over two months left before the holidays. Two months of feeling like pure shit, if he was being entirely honest - a rare feat, in these troubling times. Maybe it would be easier to just stop and acknowledge the fact that he might, or probably, or most likely, for some inexplicable reason, had developed some rather complicated feelings for Choi Soob-... that he probably had feelings for… feelings f…

_Oh for fucks sake._

So everything was decidedly not fine.

Yeonjun put a pillow over his face with an exasperated groan. He should definitely not have come back to school this year.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm really sorry for not having them end up together, but i guarantee yeonjun eventually figures out his personal shit and learns the value of Failing and Taking Breaks and Stop Repressing Feelings among other things (something i myself, and many others undoubtedly struggle with), and then they embark on an extremely long slowburn, one sided enemies to friends to lovers story spanning over several years, and live happily ever after
> 
> if you by any chance wanna read a yeonbin fic that's more satisfactory in the romance department, you can read it [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24001924)
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/hyukaang) // [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/yeonbun)


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